1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telecommunications, in general, and more particularly to forwarding electronic mail messages.
2. Description of the Related Art
Short message service (SMS) is a wireless service that enables the transmission of alphanumeric messages between mobile subscribers and between mobile subscribers and systems external to the mobile network (e.g., electronic mail, paging, and voice processing systems). The Short Message Peer to Peer (SMPP) protocol standardizes an SMS communication interface for the communication of messages between a message center and an SMS application system. For a detailed description of the SMPP protocol, see SMPP Developers Forum, Short Message Peer to Peer Protocol Specification v3.4 (Oct. 12, 1999).
In general, a user of SMS messaging may have multiple communications devices (e.g., cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs)). The user may forward to an alternate communications device SMS messages addressed to a cellular telephone. However, not all of these devices may be SMS compatible and a user may possess only one SMS compatible communications device (e.g., a cellular telephone). Simply forwarding all SMS messages to a second communications device is futile if the second communications device is not SMS compatible.
When an SMS subscriber's SMS-compliant communications device is disabled or otherwise unable to receive short messages, the message remains in an SMS queue for the communications device until either transmission is successful or the message expires. Maintaining the message in the SMS queue and resending the message consumes network resources and may delay or prevent successful transmission and receipt of the message.
In addition, to initiate a forwarding request, a user typically enables forwarding from a first device, i.e., the communications device from which messages are forwarded. However if the first device is unavailable to the user or disabled, the user may not be able to initiate a forwarding request. Thus, improved techniques for handling SMS messages are desired.